K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

Learning from the dot-configs

I learn a lot from other people’s configuration files. They’re not always out in the open, so it’s always fun to find one or two, and see how other people do things.

Some people are kind enough to simply post their files online, sort like like this .bashrc offered by Jared. I actually learned a new option for shopt there, and the list of aliases is interesting too.

(Of course, the real value in Jared’s site is the massive, planet-crushing list of console applications collected over time. Learning a new option or variable or alias from a bashrc is pretty cool, but that list overshadows everything else.)

Now the grandaddy repository of configuration files is still probably dotfiles.org. Anything you could possibly want is in there, and it’s arranged in such a way that post your own too. The key to using that site is not to say, “I want a sample conf file for mplayer,” but rather to peruse the files that people offer, and see if there’s something that appeals to you.

And if you’re using elinks, don’t bother trying to preview the configuration files since they tend to get smushed around and are hard to read. (Other browsers seem to show them OK.) Everything is accessible through wget or curl though, so it may be easier to just download them and skim through them at your leisure. Add the parts you like to your own configuration files, and see how the world spins up as a result. :mrgreen:

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2 thoughts on “Learning from the dot-configs”

Actually, if you go to github and search for “dotfiles”, you’ll find vast archives of people’s configs. It’s a common practice for programmers to keep their development environments under version control.